We meet Monday, March 1, and the first Monday of each month from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Below are links to the project website and a map showing the new location at 3121 E 12th, just west of Airport. If you’d like to volunteer, please send an email to jane.chamberlain@gmail.com so I can put you on the update list. (Please note they also have evening sessions available.)
I’d like book-loving progressives to know about an exciting volunteer opportunity with Inside Books, a nonprofit focused on providing reading material to Texas’s 170,000-odd prisoners. IBP receives roughly 800 letters per month from prisoners in the Texas system requesting reading material by subject. Volunteers take a letter, look for the best match in IBP’s library of donated books, write a short note and prepare a package of free books for mailing.
“The most fun you can have doing good ” . . . Prisoners’ letters are respectful and appreciative, sometimes funny, often engaging and inspiring. Many have been victimized by circumstances. Most have few educational opportunities and limited access to libraries that are themselves frequently in poor condition, heavily censored, filled with pulp fiction but lacking in African-American and Mexican-American subjects, GED and other standardized test training, coping with specific medical conditions, and art/craft how-to-do-its.